“What are these Ferguson people protesting anyway?”
That’s the question I heard from a family member after she learned I joined a rally for Michael Brown at the State Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota on Tuesday, November 25th. The rally became a march down University Avenue. 
Protests were held across the nation in the wake of a Grand Jury decision not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.
On August 9, 2014, Darren Wilson stopped Michael Brown and his friend for walking down the center-line of the street. The incident ended with Michael Brown’s death.
Protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri after details of the August 9th shooting spread. Michael Brown remained in the street for over four hours. 
At the rally in St. Paul, protesters held silent for four and half minutes, remembering the four hours that Brown’s body lay in view.
Witnesses said that Michael Brown raised his hands in over his head and declared “Hands up! Don’t shoot.” Officer Wilson, in his testimony for the Grand Jury, saw a different version of Michael Brown.
Wilson’s account of events on August 9th, and his portrait of the young man Michael Brown is not one of a teenager, or even a man, but of a character invented, a black villainous caricature of a racist stereotype.
After he shot Brown, Wilson described Michael Brown as “bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting him.”
Wilson said that during the confrontation Michael Brown looked “like a demon.” When asked why he didn’t use a taser, he said he wasn’t carrying one. “It’s not the most comfortable thing,” Wilson said.
What are the people protesting? 
An unarmed black 18-year old was shot and killed by a police officer. No criminal charges will be filed. In the United States young black males are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than whites. The confrontation between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson is one more example of lethal force being used against a black teenager in America. 
The story is tragic, but familiar. Its repetition depends upon a racist justice system that accepts the death of black Americans as part of protecting the public. That system depends on the devaluation of black life.
